'Chapter Two' reveals serious Simon at Laguna Playhouse

Jennie Malone (Caroline Kinsolving, right) walks into her apartment as Leo Schneider (Kevin Ashworth) and Faye Medwick (Leslie Stevens) are kissing in the play "Chapter Two" at The Laguna Playhouse. The play runs through Feb. 3.PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

"Chapter Two," Neil Simon's 1977 play about a recently widowed man's bumpy road to romantic happiness, is an interesting hybrid. It's full of the rat-a-tat jokes and formulaic exit lines that characterize his early work. Simon started out as a TV gag writer, and signs of that pedigree are everywhere here.

But it's also the first time that Simon dared to explore drama, and he went to a brave source for inspiration: his own life.

Simon's first wife had died of cancer in 1973, and his relationship with actress Marsha Mason, who would quickly become wife number two, is the well-known inspiration for this script. The character of George, a spy novelist who yearns for his more literary work to take off, is an obvious doppelganger for the playwright at the midpoint of his career. Jennie, an attractive, vivacious woman and successful actress, is clearly the stand-in for Mason.

At the Laguna Playhouse, director Andrew Barnicle and his cast are at their best when things get serious. The play's most famous scene is a high-stakes showdown in which George, still haunted by the memory of his dead wife, tries to alienate his new spouse Jennie with abusive behavior. She pushes back, with a fury.

"I'm wonderful! I'm nuts about me! And if you're stupid enough to throw someone sensational like me aside, then you don't deserve as good as you've got!"

Jennie goes on to tell George what she wants: home, family, career, goldfish. "I want everything!" she declares. She knows that's impossible, but the important thing is to try.

It's a galvanizing moment – it saves their new marriage, which George, out of tortured self-pity, has tried hard to destroy even before it has begun. But it serves as a calling card for a new Neil Simon, too: A writer ready to delve to deeper, more painful places and flesh out characters that aren't middle-aged and male.

Jennie's outburst also betrays the play's vintage. Her dreams read like a wish list of 1970s feminism, and they remind us that "Chapter Two" was written in a time when women were making a strident case for equality in all things.

It was also an era when outmoded fashions and belief systems still held sway. George's brother Leo, who introduces him to Jennie, has eyes for Jennie's friend Faye, and she feels the same way about him. But neither will leave their disastrous marriages, even though they'd be far happier with each other, or simply single.

Such details can make "Chapter Two" seem like a period play, and they're reinforced by Bruce Goodrich's sets and costumes, which vividly bring back the excessive '70s in all its bad-taste glory: harvest yellow kitchen appliances, wide lapels, belt buckles the size of dinner plates, a sea of polyester.

These minutiae, in the hands of a lesser director, could easily turn "Chapter Two" into something light and even slightly campy. But Barnicle never lets us forget that the stakes are high and tragedy dwells just under the surface.

You can see it in the performances of the leads.

Geoffrey Lower captures George's underlying grief in body language. George is blithely funny, as are all Simon characters of this period, but the humor of his words is belied by his downcast eyes, slumped shoulders and the obsessive tasks he fusses over, such as opening the mail.

Caroline Kinsolving shows us that Jennie, too, harbors profound damage under her can-do surface. Kinsolving gives her character the gift of stillness. Jennie can hold a pose or gaze unflinchingly when she's making a point or the going gets rough. This is a woman who's determined not to commit a second mistake with romance, and she's concentrating every fiber on making things work.

Barnicle's production flags a bit in some comic moments. Leo and Faye's shenanigans in Jennie's apartment, where they meet to consummate their attraction, should crackle with the energy of farce. Actors Kevin Ashworth and Leslie Stevens never quite get there.

The timing of comic dialogue isn't pitch-perfect. Some early-play repartee between characters seems a bit slow and tentative. At other times, though, this production gets it just right. A scene in which George contacts Jennie by mistake, resulting in a series of increasingly flirtatious follow-up phone calls, is charming and hilarious – a deft staging of one of the best meet-cute scenes in American theater.

It's been a while since a Simon play has been seen at the Laguna Playhouse. Perhaps the moratorium should end, at least with his later plays. The place was full, the audience was entertained, and the warmth of the story momentarily banished thoughts of the punishingly cold night outside. And at the beginning of the year, who doesn't enjoy a story about starting over?

Jennie Malone (Caroline Kinsolving, right) walks into her apartment as Leo Schneider (Kevin Ashworth) and Faye Medwick (Leslie Stevens) are kissing in the play "Chapter Two" at The Laguna Playhouse. The play runs through Feb. 3. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Jennie Malone (Caroline Kinsolving, left) sets up a five-minute date with George Schneider (Geoffrey Lower) after Schneider misdialed the person he was trying to reach in the play "Chapter Two" at The Laguna Playhouse. The two are in separate apartments. The play runs through Feb. 3. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Leo Schneider (Kevin Ashworth) dips Faye Medwick (Leslie Stevens) as the two dance while having an affair in the play "Chapter Two" at The Laguna Playhouse. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Jennie Malone (Caroline Kinsolving) gives George Schneider (Geoffrey Lower) a wet towel on his forehead to relieve Schneider's date night jitters in the play "Chapter Two" at The Laguna Playhouse. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
George Schneider (Geoffrey Lower) sets up a five-minute date after misdialing the person he was trying to reach in the play "Chapter Two" at The Laguna Playhouse. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Jennie Malone (Caroline Kinsolving, left) hands over her apartment key to Faye Medwick (Leslie Stevens) so Medwick can use the apartment for an affair in the play "Chapter Two" at The Laguna Playhouse. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Leo Schneider (Kevin Ashworth, left) talks to his brother George Schneider (Geoffrey Lower) before George's wedding in the play "Chapter Two" at The Laguna Playhouse. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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